The Flight of Icarus
by Grave Destroyer of Souls
Summary: Rewrite of the previous Flight of Icarus. Different storyline. After being held in a certain School, an amnesiac Ed breaks out with the flock to try to learn about his past.
1. Prologue: The Sea of Blood

Flight of Icarus  
Prologue: The Sea of Blood

XXXXXXX

_Viewpoint: Unnamed School resident; dream/flashback._

_I'm standing in a sea of blood that's up to my knees while I put the finishing touches on an intricate design of blood on a huge stone slab. It's a circle with many runes scribbled on the outside._

_Bringing God down to Earth…__ I ponder what I'm about to do; transmuting oneself is no easy task. My eyes wander to several stone tablets piled on the stone slab. From the assumption that they were all one piece at one time, they depicted a beast of some kind about to swallow the sun. _

_A dagger of pain hitting my broken left arm reminds me what I have to do._

"_It's finished," I say. "If I transmute myself, you two jump in, and we use the Philosopher's stone-" I glance at a huge fiend lurking in the shadows. "-to pay the toll, we should emerge from the same place where we were taken. In other words-"_

"_Gluttony's stomach," says a boy around my age, to the opposite side of the fiend. Ling's right, but he's not done. "What do those stone tablets symbolize, Ed?"_

_I glance at the tablets. "The two intertwined dragons were upside-down; that symbolizes throwing God to Earth."_

"_Throwing God to Earth? That's a high concept for mere humans to think of," says Ling. _

"_Well, the tablet also depicts a lion about to swallow the Sun. That symbolizes the Philosopher's Stone. This should allow me to transmute myself, using Envy's Stone as a toll."_

_Envy- the fiend- lumbers over to the stone slab. "Then stop talking roundabout, Fullmetal. __This-__" He opens up his mouth, showing a pulsing red stone connected to indistinct white shapes. "-is what you __really__ want. Isn't it? Get us out of here-" He sucks down the red stone. "-and I'll tell you about Cselkcess."_

_I sigh, and force my left arm towards my right. My fingers bend and stiffen as I hold back the pain._

_When my hands meet, I let the power flow from within me into the circle._

_The lightning and howling wind come, but there's something else- something wrong. I feel a dark presence under my feet._

"_Envy! Ling! Jump in!" I yell. They follow my order without hesitation- I'm the alchemist who's getting them out, after all. The feeling swells and I fill with dread. Something's definitely happening. The ground underneath me flashes, and my legs start to be deconstructed. But this time, it's painful. Envy isn't faring much better, and Ling is almost gone. _

_What happens next comes in a furious wave. We're deposited in front of the Gate; Truth sneers and waves us through, taking a handful of souls from Envy, and the brain attack comes. My brain is crammed with knowledge- secrets of life and some things I already know, rapidly being shoved into my head. Through the onslaught of knowledge, I glimpse Envy, being transformed back to his human form. Ling is yelling in pain. We slowly are separated as the pain in my head builds. I scream and I'm catapulted into a strange portal._

_I emerge, but the next three seconds flash by. I'm thrown through a lab and smack my head into a cage. The world darkens, and the last thing I see is a winged girl of about ten inside the cage peering down on me with a curious expression._


	2. I: Meeting Angel

Flight of Icarus  
Chapter One: Meeting Angel

XXXXXXX

I woke up gasping as my dream played back in my head. I'd heard myself respond to two names: Fullmetal and Ed. I'd also been called an alchemist, and I had some kind of power…

But I was still a prisoner. I could call myself Ed, Fullmetal, anything; I was still a prisoner.

"Oh… you're awake," said a voice from the cage to my left. It was a little girl of probably seven or eight with sad eyes.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"My name's Angel. The Erasers snatched me from my family. I hope Max can get here…"

"The Erasers… are you talking about the Cerberes? They're the things that this place uses as their guard dogs," I said. "And who's Max?"

"Max is my best friend and the leader of my family. Max taught me how to survive. They snatched me from my family, but Max got hurt and couldn't get me back."

"Why does Hell-" I gestured to the cages around me. "-want an ordinary little girl like you as an experiment?"

Angel smiled, and two wings unfolded from the back of her hospital gown. "I can fly with these. And I can read minds, too."

"Really?" I frowned and thought about my dream and the strange power I'd used.

"You're thinking about that power from your dream. I was watching your dream, too. You called it 'alchemy' right before that fat guy's stomach swallowed you and your friends up."

"Well done," I conceded. "Who's the rest of your family?"

"Besides Max, there's Fang, Iggy, Nudge, and Gazzy."

"Gaz-"

"He has some problems with his lower digestive system. I think the whitecoats said it was his semicolon."

"Colon, that'd be his lower intestine. This means he has a lot of-"

"Yeah."

An awkward silence followed.

"So who got you guys out of here in the first place?" I said.

Angel fidgeted nervously. "Jeb. Jeb Batchelder, but he's dead now. He disappeared two years after he got us out. I was two when we escaped, and I'm six now-"

"Actually, Angel," I said, "Jeb's alive and well. I've talked to him almost every day for the past two y-"

"Hey, Angel," said a fatherly voice from the door. Jeb was there, smiling happily. "Welcome back. I missed you, kiddo."

XXXXXXX

I talked with Angel every chance I got, in between when the Demons did experiments on me. She had learned that Hell's owner- some corporation called Itex- was thinking about sewing wings onto the Cerberes.

"Winged Erasers'll be too much for Max and everyone else," finished Angel grimly.

"Not for me," I said. I unfolded my wings partially from the back of my shirt. Angel gasped and smiled.

"Those are beautiful! How do they work?"

"Um, they work fine, but they attempted it a bunch of times, and they ripped the mistakes off of my back. But these ones work the best." The scars where the Demons had ripped out my ex-wings burned slightly.

"Do you know which bird the wings came from?"

"I think they said some kind of an eagle," I said. "Did you-"

_Grrrrrrrmmmmmmbbbrrrr…_

I looked down at my stomach as it gurgled with desire. "…Did food come while I was asleep?" I said sheepishly.

As I spoke, a Demon came in, carrying a double tray in his arms. It had a huge bowl of some meaty substance I presumed to be chili, between two trays steaming with things I couldn't see. "Order up!" he said cheerfully.

"Good evening," I said evenly. The Demon bent down and placed the tray on the ground as he unlocked my cage. He placed the tray in my cage before shutting it and leaving.

Angel pouted. "Why do they treat you so much better than me?"

"They're trying to advance their line of prosthetic limbs by studying mine. They're also trying to figure out how I got here. I'm cooperating in exchange for being treated reasonably, and I guess they're fine with it. But this place is still Hell," I explained, and started to eat.

After ten minutes passed, the food had been finished and I leaned back against the back of my cage with a grin of dopy satisfaction.

"You ate that food fast," said Angel. "And you weren't given the bird wings when you were first born?"

"Nope," I said, gulping down a glass of milk. Some part of me seemed to recoil from the glass, but I finished it off. I placed it down on the tray.

"That's another thing they've been studying. Jeb told me that they've been doing tests on me to see why I eat much more than I… um, waste. The Demons have told me that if they didn't know better, they'd say I was eating for two instead of one."

"Max says that everyone with bird wings has a high metabamalism-"

"Metabolism."

"-metabolism, yeah, because the bird DNA makes you burn food faster."

_Max must be a smart guy,_ I thought. _I'd love to meet him, but not in Hell._

"Experiment ten-three-eleven!" yelled a Demon from the door. "Have you finished your meal?"

"Uh, yeah," I said, brushing some crumbs off of my black jeans. "What do you need?"

"Jeb would like to see you," he said, walking over and taking my finished tray. He opened up my cage and beckoned.

XXXXXXX

The Demon walked me over to a small meeting room about the size of the room where I slept. Jeb was sitting at the only table with one other chair pulled up. He motioned for me to sit down.

"Ed. So nice to see you," said Jeb kindly. "You might have heard from Angel that we're trying to duplicate your artificial limb-"

"That's very nice, but could I have my Memory Journal?" I asked. Jeb said yes and handed me my black notebook and a pen with _Itex International _on the barrel. I started to write about my dream while listening to Jeb.

"People around the world are sometimes born without a limb or part of the body. Your prosthesis- well, to be honest, we've never seen anything like it before. If you could permit us to do some analyses on your arm, ankle and foot again, we could start going into the artificial limb business. Since it functions even better than a normal arm, we can really help out the people who need aid."

"There's not much of a market for artificial limbs."

"That may be true, but how would it feel knowing that you helped people without limbs get their lives back?"

I pondered this for a few minutes to have my thoughts interrupted by a Cerberus opening the door.

"Dad," he panted to Jeb. "Check out who we captured."


	3. II: Meeting Max

Flight of Icarus

Chapter Two: Meeting Max

XXXXXXX

The burn of an airbag was still visible on the girl's face as she peered up at Jeb, the Cerberes, and me from the floor of the confinement room as we walked in. She looked dazed and got a little sad when the Cerberes peered at her.

"Ari… why did you ever want to be an Eraser?" she said sadly. "You were so cute when you were a baby…"

"I don't care what you say, Max-"

"Whoah! Is this the Max that Angel's told me so much about?" I exclaimed.

"That's me," the girl said proudly, smiling a little.

"But… you're a chick!"

The smile vanished and she leaped up and punched me in the nose in the space of about half a second. It was a good punch, too; she twisted the fist slightly as it made contact while putting her whole body into the punch.

It still broke my nose and sent me staggering into the wall.

"If I _ever_ hear you make a remark like that about me again, I will hunt you down and strangle you with your own intestines," she seethed as I covered my nose with my shirt. "Little sexist pig," she muttered.

"I'm _sorry!_ Jeez! Angel didn't even tell me you were a girl!"

The Cerberus sighed and made for the door.

"Max, calm down," said Jeb.

Max stiffened. "I'm still furious at you," she yelled at Jeb. "You left us when I was twelve. We thought you were dead, and we thought you were one of the good guys."

"Sometimes, not everything makes sense," said Jeb sagely. "When it does-"

"-you tell the world to go screw itself with a jackhammer," I muttered. Max laughed and then blushed like she was angry with herself.

Jeb frowned. "When it does, you go to the people you trust for help."

"You're not one of those people to me anymore," said Max.

"He was helping me for the past few years," I said. "Nothing evil, trust me."

"Shut up, sexist pig," she said. "You're-"

She paused.

"…You look kinda familiar," she said, frowning. "Have we met?"

I thought back to my dream…

…_Through the pain and darkness, I see a ten-year-old girl with golden blond hair in a white hospital gown. She's got curious eyes and frowns as she scrutinizes me through the cage…_

"I think I remember you…" I began, holding a tissue Jeb gave me to my nose.

Max gave a little gasp. "You're the boy who came out of the air when I was ten!"

Jeb frowned. "Can you-"

"My name's Ed, "I said. As I spoke it, my brain seemed to fill up a little like I'd gotten access to more memories.

Jeb changed his frown to a smile. "Wonderful. You've remembered your name. Go back to your room, because I need to talk to Max alone."

He gave me a few more tissues and gestured to the door. I walked past Max, and if I didn't know better, she had a smile on her face.

XXXXXXX

A Demon escorted me to my room, and after he opened up the door to the cages, I noticed that there were more kids in the cages. Mine was still unoccupied.

The Demon swiped his card and pushed me in the cage, shut it, and walked out.

"Is Max here?" said Angel to me nervously.

"She is," I said, blowing some blood out of my nose. "And it would've been nice of you to tell me that Max is a girl."

"Oops," said Angel, giggling nervously.

"Is she okay?" said a black-haired boy in the cage above Angel's.

"The airbag got in a nice shot, but she's conscious, unfortunately for my nose," I said.

"Shut the hell up, prick," said the boy.

"He's a little protective of Max," said a fast voice to the right of my cage. "Don't feel bad." The speaker turned out to be a dark girl with a bump on her forehead and a fleece jacket. "My name's Nudge, what's your name?" she said in about half a second.

"My name's Ed, or Fullmetal, or alchemist," I said, sighing. "I got amnesia a few years ago. Max remembers how it happened."

"Are you the idiot who bursted out of thin air when Max and I were ten?" asked the black-haired boy.

"Yep. What's your name? Should I call you Piss? 'Cuz you're a pissimist."

"It's pessimist, you idiot!" he yelled. "And I'm-"

"Oh, so it's _pessimist_. Okay, nice to meet you, Pessy." I held out my right arm to the cage above Angel's.

"My name's Fang, and _what happened to your arm!_" he yelled.

"I'm still calling you Pessy."

"OK, Ed, or Fullmetal, or alchemist," said Nudge, giving a little giggle after. "What happened to your arm? Did it get blown off or cut off- ew! Because your arm's really cool!" She said this all very fast.

"I don't know," I said. "I've had it for as long as I can remember. My other arm's been growing, so they've been working on my arm, like lengthening it and stuff."

"You're still a freak," said Pessy.

"And you're still a pessimist."

"I'm _not_ a pessimist! I'm just-"

"Depressed? Should I call you Depressy then?"

"Shut up!"

"Hey, Angel? Where are Iggy and Gazzy?" I said, counting the kids.

"I don't know…" said Angel. "I hope Gazzy's okay…" I remembered that Gazzy was Angel's brother. A brief image of a nine-year-old boy with short hair flashed through my head, but it was gone within a few seconds.

I opened up my journal and wrote in the date.

_Met the famous Max today that Angel's told me so much about. Painfully discovered that Max is a girl. Also met some of Angel's gang- Nudge, fast talker; Fang, moody depressed kid (called him Pessy and Depressy. Seems to piss him off)._

_-Who are Iggy and Gazzy?_

_-Had a dream about me doing "alchemy" in a sea of blood. How? Traveling to some different dimension seems cool, but from the results, I'm not too sure._

_-I should ask Jeb for my travelogue so that I can take a whack at interpreting it again._

_-I'll try sketching some of the diagrams in the travelogue. Every one of them is near a line that mentions customs on clapping in different (make-believe) countries. Is there a connection between alchemy and clapping?_


	4. III: Relearning the Ropes

Flight of Icarus  
Chapter Three: Relearning the Ropes

XXXXXXX

BZZZZT! BZZZT! BZZT!

"Yeah, yeah," I mumbled, waking up and getting off the floor of my cage and tapping the small alarm panel in the inside roof. Six o' clock in the morning always came too early for me, no matter how early I went to bed.

I banged my metal fist into the bars of my cage. "Gimme breakfast!" I yelled.

"Shut up, Ed!" came Max's voice from my right. "They're giving it to us right now!" I looked to the right, and saw that the Demons had put Max in Nudge's cage- Nudge had been moved to a smaller cage above Max's.

"Did I just hear you call me Ed instead of Sexist Pig? That's so nice of you."

"Quiet!" she said. "You're even more of an insufferable jackass than I'd first guessed!"

I sighed. I thought of my dream…

…_Facing the chimera, I clap my hands together and think of my favorite weapon- a spear with a design near the point. Staring straight at my foe, I reach my right arm out with an open hand, and I concentrate on an image of a circle with three triangles overlapping in the center. A spear slowly crawls straight up out of the floor and into my hand…_

I hurriedly sketched the triangle circle onto the back of my hand with the Itex pen before the image faded from my head. _Spear, _I wrote to the side of the circle. _Other weapons?_ I wrote afterwards.

"Ten-three-eleven!" yelled a Demon. "Slide aside in your cage!"

I saw a set of legs belonging to the Demon walking over to my cage, and I slid backwards. I hid my hand behind my back after giving it a bit of thought.

A plate of eggs mixed with vegetables and steak was on the tray, along with a half-gallon of orange juice and eight pieces of French toast. I looked over at Max's tray as her stomach grumbled: there was a solitary hard-boiled egg and a piece of bread next to a glass of milk.

"I'm not gonna accept anything from-" began Max. I poked a piece of French toast through the bars between our cages. Max fumed for about half a second before taking the food.

"A thank-you would be nice," I said. Max gave me the finger and continued to chomp on the French toast.

I sighed. _I guess I should have low expectations when it comes to her manners. _

Max finished the piece and held her hand out for another. "Give more."

I frowned at her and moved closer to her side. "You're not a very nice-"

Max threaded her hand through the bars of my cage, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and slammed my head into the bars before letting go. "Ow!" I yelled as stars danced before my eyes.

"More toast. I'm hungry and you've got more than I do." Max's hand was out again; I stuffed three pieces of the food in her hand before moving away to the other side of my cage where I could eat in peace.

The eggs were okay, and the French toast was mediocre. Thankfully, since the OJ was still in the packaging, I assumed they couldn't screw it up. For Hell, it was a nice breakfast.

I finished up in minutes and looked over at the other kids. Angel had eaten her breakfast and so had Nudge. Depressy was pushing his food around his plate with calmness.

"Is it true that _everyone_ who's depressed eats almost nothing?" I said to him.

"Shut the fuck up!" he screamed. When he turned back to his food, though, he started to eat it.

"Don't make fun of Fang, pig," said Max with a mouthful of toast.

"I call him Depressy. He needs to cheer up and smile once in a while," I said.

"He is kinda sad," said Max. "But he smiles sometimes…" She trailed off and a dopy grin stole across her face.

And suddenly everything made sense.

"Ah, that's so sweet," I said, grinning like an idiot.

"What?" demanded Max, the happy expression vanishing from her face in an instant.

"How your face got all dopy and happy and so unlike the way it is when you were thinking about when Depressy smiles."

Max's face turned red. "You did not just say that."

"Hey, Depressy. I think Max right here likes you."

"Wha…?" said Depressy, suddenly paying lots of attention.

Max turned white. "Stop talking. Right now. Fang is my friend, no matter what delusion you've got," she said with difficulty.

I shrugged and did as she said, but I couldn't help but notice that Depressy seemed even more sad than he did before.

After some thought, I decided to try thinking about the circle to kill some time. I placed my hands together and concentrated on the image. _Knife, _I thought, and envisioned a switchblade with a cool design.

I held my hand out to one of the bars of my cage and waited. It didn't take long.

I felt a limitless power crawl out of me and it came out of my outstretched right hand, hitting the bar in the form of blue lightning. A perceptible sound- like cloth rubbing together- hit the air, and a rectangular shape slowly crawled out of the bar. It started off slower, but- as if it was running for the first time- it gained speed.

In about ten seconds, I was holding a black switchblade with a skulls-and-snakes design. I flipped out the blade- it looked just as I'd envisioned it, about three inches long and razor-sharp.

Unfortunately, when I tore my focus from the blade to the winged kids, all four of them were staring at me with awe and appalled expressions.

I turned red and stowed the folded blade away, laughing nervously. "Oops. Didn't mean for you guys to see that."

But Max had turned white, Depressy had slid all the way to the back of his cage, Nudge had gasped and covered her mouth, and Angel looked like she was about to faint.

"You're… you're a…" Max was speechless.


	5. IV: An Olive Branch

IV: An Olive Branch

The next month went by at a painfully slow pace. The others' attitudes towards me slowly evolved from disbelief to a mix of emotions; Max no longer acted nasty to me (in fact, she avoided interacting with me whenever she could), Fang turned even more sullen and withdrawn, Angel had a blend of awe and fear, and Nudge…

Well, Nudge could not stop asking me how I conjured the knife.

"Do you have it figured out yet, Ed?"

"No."

"But what were you doing to make it appear?"

"I just thought of a knife and put my hands together."

"…It doesn't work when I try it! How come?"

"I don't know."

"Could it be your metal arm?"

"Probably."

"Why aren't you sure?"

"Okay- I was able to do it by summoning the almost boundless energy of the Earth's tectonic plates into the bar of my cage and using my mind to think of a certain symbol that allows me to channel the energy into creating a completely new object from the bar, reshaping the bar, or deconstructing it altogether….. Where the fuck did that come from?" I didn't know how I came up with the explanation- it was like another person had temporary control of my mouth.

I noticed Max stir in the adjacent cage. Her expression of avoidance slowly morphed into one of recognition, then a shifty grin. "Wait a minute, pig. You can destroy things with this power?"

"Deconstruct, actually. The matter would still exist, but I can probably turn things into dust with the energy."

"You don't say…"

This was getting unsettling.

"Tell me what you want."

"Get us all out of here, pig, with that stupid power of yours."

"Are you kidding? Once the Demons see I'm helping people escape, they'll kill me! I can't do it. I'm sorry."

Max's face twitched violently for a moment, and then she composed herself. "Y-You could come with us."

"What?" Depressy and I said the word at the exact same moment. He glared at me before continuing.

"Max, we know nothing of this prick. For all we know, he might be some weird weapon of the School's that they're keeping locked up because he can destroy the world. We should just leave him here to rot."

That struck a nerve.

"Not only are you depressed, you're clearly also as dumb as a brick. Why the fuck would they bother to keep me locked up if I can just destroy the lock, and the cage with it? If they knew of my power, they would keep me in restraints and drugged to prevent me from focusing on deconstruction and putting my hands together. Besides, if I was _really_ a weapon, I would have known of my power for quite a while instead of discovering it just a month ago. Just shut up before you embarrass yourself even more, dumbfuck. I hope Max didn't make you the brains of your stupid little group, because if she did, you're probably the reason you're all in here, and for all I know, you'd probably get everyone captured again within hours."

His nostrils flared and his face turned red. "I'm not stupid. And not our entire group got cap-"

"Shhh!" hissed Max. "He doesn't need to know everything!"

She faced me, twitching again. "If you want to come with us, be civil."

"Why, because not being civil is your job?"

"Stop it, Ed," whimpered Angel. "Please, just get along with them."

"Why should I? I've been taking Max's shit for weeks; it's ab-"

_THOOM._

The far wall shuddered and cracked.

"Is it…?" whispered Max.

"**Yes!** They're here!" Angel shouted triumphantly.

_THOOM. KRAKA-KSSHHHH…._

The wall crumbled, exposing the afternoon sky, and real air with it. Real, clean, cool, outside air. I took a deep breath involuntarily and smiled before clapping my hands. _Deconstruct._

The bars on the front of our cages crumbled into metal dust. Meanwhile, the cages at the far wall slowly moved to form a small opening; behind the cages stood an older boy with light hair and a smaller boy with a cowlick.

"Good to see you guys!"

The four other kids ran out of their cages and crashed together in a big group hug. I wasn't sure whether or not I belonged, so I climbed out of my cage and awkwardly leaned against the side.

"We missed you so much!"

"Did you guys like our entrance?"

"Yeah, whose work was it?"

"Iggy made the bomb and I threw it!"

"You're the best!"

The group stacked their fists before they fell into another group hug mixed with expressions of relief. Then- and I swear they all turned towards me at once- the focus shifted to me.

"Who's the kid?"

Max opened her mouth, probably to tell them to leave me behind, but Angel spoke first. "He's a really nice kid who can use the Earth's tectonic energy to shape things. His name is Ed. I think he can help us if he comes with us."

I could tell from Max's face that she was about to say the exact opposite to them. Depressy, thankfully, kept his mouth shut, although his glare attempted to rip me to pieces.

"Is he spying for the School?" asked the taller kid. He looked right at me as he said it, and as I saw his blank eyes I realized he was blind.

"I may have let them examine my mechanical arm and leg, but I'd never even think of spying for them. You can trust me on that," I said, conjuring up as much sincerity as I could muster.

Everybody looked at Angel. Oh, right, it was because she could read minds.

"He's not lying," she said. "We can trust him."

Max's expression softened just a tiny bit. "Okay then! Let's go!"

An idea struck me. "Hang on." I clapped my hands and slammed them into the floor, thinking _Deconstruct_. Lightning spread from my hands to the cage doors before they fizzled away into nothing, and the poor things inside slowly got out. "Go and be free." After a thought, I went into my cage and grabbed my memory journal.

"Now we can go."


	6. V: Regroup

V: Regroup

For the next hour or so, we focused on nothing but putting as much distance as possible between our prison and us. Nobody spoke, but a funny tickling sensation at the back of my mind meant Angel was flipping through my thoughts to see if I was a spy. Which meant she didn't trust me.

Good. They had every reason to be suspicious of me. If they blindly allowed a near-complete stranger to join them, they were too stupid to live. My head itched; Angel was really digging around in there. Which meant she hadn't found anything bad.

"Hey!" called Max. I made a sharp turn to intercept her until I was directly above her.

"What is it? And, you know, you can just call me by my name instead of shouting at me."

She muttered curses under her breath before looking up at me. "I'm getting hungry, and Angel says the rest of the flock is too. We need to find food."

"Okay," I said.

She looked up at me again, but this time she had a big ol' shit-eating grin on her face. "Why don't you find us some food, then?"

Ah. So she was testing me. I returned her infuriating grin. "So what did you have in mind? Breaking open a vending machine? Shoplifting from a grocery store? Going to a soup kitchen or a food bank?"

"Whatever you think would work best, Ed," she replied, spitting out my name like a loogie. I smirked. She was seeing if I was willing to commit a crime to feed myself.

This would be good.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a strip mall, the rows of cars in front reflecting the orange sunset into my eyes. A handful of dumpsters lined the back end of the building. "I think I see some food. Follow me." I adjusted my wings and dove. Behind me, I saw the rest of the kids do the same out of the corner of my eye; Max paused for a few seconds before she also dove.

I landed in front of a particularly nasty-smelling dumpster with _George's mEatery _painted on the side. I pushed the lid open before hopping in and landing on a massive pile of meats individually packaged in Styrofoam and plastic wrap. Most of them were spoiled to varying degrees, but the ones at the top of the heap didn't look too bad. I selected a rack of lamb, an absolutely massive beef roast, and a few chops and steaks, tossing each one to Max, who stowed them in the backpack Iggy was wearing.

I hoisted myself out of the dumpster and landed with what I hoped was grace. I rose and faced Max with (again, what I hoped was) a smug grin. "I found us all some food. We'll have to cook it, but that should be easy."

To my despair, that infuriating smirk of hers crossed Max's face. Again. "Nudge doesn't eat meat." A quick glance at the smaller girl confirmed it, as she was regarding the meats with a genuine mix of disgust and fear.

I sighed. "There's got to be a produce dumpster around here somewhere."

* * *

Thirty minutes, four dumpster-dives, and a short flight later, we set up camp in a small copse in the middle of a large patch of woods. The others got a fire going with practiced ease, and most of the food was cooking. The steaks had been cut into thin shreds and smoked; I had convinced Max that preserving some of the food would come in handy for when no fresh food was readily available. She'd agreed with me, but grudgingly so. That girl needed to work on making friends.

Nudge was chowing down on a bag of iffy apples I had liberated from a Target dumpster. We had also lifted a handful of backpacks and blankets from a clothing dumpster behind the same store; Angel had wrapped herself in the most comfy one and was fast asleep at Max's side. Each had an arm around the other. Fang was eyeing Angel enviously. I could tell he would have cut off one of his arms to get the chance to snuggle with Max.

Gazzy and Iggy, on the other hand, were sitting on the ground facing a pile of electronics between them that had also been taken from a dumpster. With practiced efficiency (frighteningly practiced), they stripped the gadgets of their plastic shells and tossed the useful bits in one pile, the husks in another.

I needed to kill time while the meat was cooking, so I walked over to them and sat down. "What are you guys working on?"

Instantly they both tensed up and their hands balled into fists. They weren't going to trust me so easily. Good.

Gazzy spoke first. "It's, um… a personal project."

"For?"

"….Blowing stuff up," he admitted.

I arched an eyebrow. "You can't make a bomb out of just this stuff. You need some kind of explosive substance."

This time it was Iggy who spoke. "We ran out. The last of our explosives went into breaking everybody out of the School."

"I could make you guys some explosive compounds, if you want," I offered.

Iggy chuckled, but Gazzy perked up in interest. "Sure! Go for it!" he shouted. Iggy sighed. "Fine… Ed. Make us whatever you want."

I got up and walked over to the fire. With my steel arm, I reached in and scooped up a handful of ash; I grabbed one of the Styrofoam trays a steak had been packaged in and started dumping ash onto it. I stopped once I had an apple-sized pile, and looked around for more things I could transmute from. After thinking for a while, I added a couple of pebbles, some thick moss, dirt, and a bunch of twigs to the tray. While I was doing this, Gazzy was describing my every move to Iggy, whose smirk of disbelief was growing with every word he heard. Well, he was going to be surprised.

I dumped the tray of stuff on the ground in front of them and sat down. "All right, here it comes."

I put my hands together and shoved my palms into the stack of raw material. Instantly a roaring wind swept the area, complemented by jagged bolts of blue lightning that sprouted from the ground before arching over the heap of disintegrating matter. An odd sound spread through the area, somewhat like both the ripping and rubbing of cloth mixed together. The wind blew, the sound grew louder… and then it all stopped.

Sitting in front of me were two piles; one had been moved to the side and was made up of the husks of material I'd used. The other pile was of maroon-colored powder.

"…I don't believe it," said Gazzy. "That… is SO COOL!"

"What happened?" said Iggy. "I heard noise, but it stopped. What did he do?"

"It was so awesome! There was lightning and wind and noise and he turned a bunch of organic stuff into Armstrong's mixture!"

Iggy's mouth fell open in a perfect O. "You're right, that _is _awesome."

I sat up. "Wait, did you say Armstrong's-"

"_-you followed me onto the train?!" I yelled at the gigantic man, as his much smaller companion laughed jovially._

"_Hmm! Following a child is no challenge for me! __**I merely used the secret tracking skills that have been passed down in the Armstrong family for generations!"**__ he boomed-_

"-mixture?" I said.

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Nothing… I didn't know there was a proper name for a mix of an oxidizer and red phosphorous." I scribbled down the few details of the flashback in my memory journal. Meanwhile, Iggy leaned forward and took a pinch of the mix from the pile with Gazzy's help, probably to examine it and see if it was the real thing. The rest of the group was stirring, roused by the noise and lightning made by my transmutation.

"Let's eat," said Max, testing the meat hanging over the fire.

And as we ripped into the first real meal I'd had in a long time, I told myself that if the kids were as easy to make friends with as Angel, I might stand a chance at getting along with them.

* * *

Author's Note: The reason why Ed's unfamiliar with the naming of Armstrong's mixture and consequently has a flashback is that although the Fullmetal Alchemist world is essentially a clone of early 20th century Earth with alchemy and automail thrown in the mix, the people it contains have different names. As a result, some things on Earth that are named after people have different names in Ed's world; it also follows that some things on Earth that we haven't named after people have been named after people in Ed's world.

As usual, your reviews are greatly appreciated. I've only just begun to continue this story again, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on what I've done right and what I've screwed up.


	7. VI: Meatball Surgery

VI: Meatball Surgery

Morning came to me in the form of a warm sunbeam striking my face. Thinking back, I couldn't remember any dreams, but I didn't care. For the first time in months, I had slept for as long as I wanted, and I felt great. I could hear birds singing and the distant sound of a highway…

But no talking or sounds of activity around me. Oh, crap. Max probably got the group to leave me behind. I opened my eyes, only to see her sitting on a log, staring blankly at me. I sat up.

"'Morning," I mumbled. "What time is it?"

She continued staring for about a second before blinking and shaking her head. "Oh. Um, uh, it's about 11:00. We woke up about three hours ago to decide what we're doing next. And we had breakfast too. They're sleeping because we have a lot of flying ahead of us." I couldn't tell because her face was in shadow, but it looked like she was blushing.

"And instead of waking me up so I could eat with you, you chose to watch me sleep. Very considerate, Max."

"Shut up! I was deciding whether or not to wake you up!" she retorted. "You're much more tolerable when you're asleep."

"So you're saying I _am_ tolerable."

"No! I mean you're less of an arrogant prick when you're asleep!"

Beside Max, Angel giggled in her sleep and rolled over.

"Get up and eat breakfast. It'll shut you up," she spat, and turned away from me. I walked over to the pile of backpacks next to the fire and took out a piece of smoked steak. I mentally sighed as I ripped into the meat, reaching behind my head beforehand and braiding my hair to get it out of my face.

Max was weird.

She got up after a few minutes and started shaking awake the rest of the group, saving Angel for last. Max smiled and gently- at least, more gently than the rest of the group- woke her up.

"Good morning, Max!" she chirped. "I had a dream about Thor! He destroyed the School for us and fought a whole bunch of Erasers and found our parents!"

"That's nice, Ang," said Max, blushing.

"Who's Thor?" I asked.

"Thor's this superhero Max had a huge crush on about two years ago," said Iggy, snickering. "He's this buff guy with long hair and he controls lightning with a hammer. And he can fly without wings."

"Okay, that's enough, Iggy. I'm rolling my eyes," said Max. She forced a laugh out, but she wasn't fooling anyone.

"And he's immortal, or something like it, and…" Gazzy stood on tiptoe and whispered something into Iggy's ear. They both started laughing. "Yeah, what a coincidence," gasped Iggy between laughs. Max's face was flushing more and more with every laugh.

"How about we just focus on getting to New York for now," muttered Max through clenched teeth.

We packed up in relative silence, though Iggy and Gazzy occasionally let a restrained laugh out. Max and Fang were both casting death glares over the whole clearing, though I had no idea why Fang was doing it. Once we were done covering up signs that we had been there, we lifted off and headed east.

* * *

We spent most of the day flying at a slow pace with the sun at our backs. Thanks to the smoked meats we had, we didn't have to land for lunch, allowing us to close the gap between New York and us with every passing second.

I'd asked Max why we were going to New York. She told me that while I was asleep, Angel had revealed to everyone else that from the snatches of thought she'd picked up in California, it was a very real possibility that a certain R&D firm in the city had the addresses of their biological parents, and a file about me.

"You do realize that the place we escaped from probably also has those files," I'd said to her. "Why not go back and save ourselves the cross-country trip?"

"If we go back there, we'll likely be captured, and the whitecoats will probably keep you drugged and restrained to prevent you from breaking out again," she'd replied coolly.

Hmm. She might actually be a good leader after all.

"Hey, Ed! Wake up already!" said Nudge, swooping in closer. "It's your turn!" We'd been playing twenty questions to pass the time. Angel, of course, wasn't playing. Max and Fang were at the head of the group, but one occasionally made a surprisingly good guess.

"Um, okay. Go ahead and ask," I said, thinking of a random noun.

"Are you a living thing?" asked Nudge.

"No."

"Are you a color?" tried Gazzy.

"No."

"Are you a chemical?" asked Iggy.

"Yes." Nudge and Gazzy quickly lost interest and flew up to meet Max and Fang. Iggy, on the other hand, smiled. So far, everything I'd had in mind was scientific, something Iggy seemed to like.

We flew through a dozen questions, Iggy getting closer to the answer every time. Finally-

"Are you ammonia?" But it wasn't Iggy who'd spoken; it was Fang.

"Yes," I said, genuinely surprised. "I didn't know you knew chemistry."

"There's more to me than you know," he muttered.

"Well, in that case, would you like to give the game a try?" I asked. He nodded.

"Are you something black?" I asked through a smile. He grudgingly nodded his head, and Max laughed.

"Are you night?" said Max teasingly. Her wingbeats had become oddly rickety in the past few seconds.

"…I hate this game," spat Fang as Max, Iggy, and I laughed.

"Alright, I'll play," said Max.

"Are you Thor?" Iggy and I said simultaneously. Max didn't answer at first, only putting her hands over her face.

"Geez, sorry I guessed your crush, Max," I said sarcastically. "You don't have to be a sore loser about-"

Then she let loose an anguished scream and dropped from the sky like a rock.

* * *

Fang swore and dove after her.

"What's going on?" said Iggy, looking extremely confused.

"You guys follow me down. I think Max is in trouble." Then I dove, easily catching up with Fang due to my greater weight, and catching Max in my arms. "Fang, help me!" I yelled; I couldn't carry her and stay aloft. Looking like he wouldn't be taking orders from me in any situation but this one, he swooped to my right and took her by the legs. She was shaking and sweating all over, tears were streaming down her face, and blood was trickling from her mouth, out of which sobs and screams of pain were still coming; she must have bitten her tongue. Her wings shuddered with every convulsion of her body.

"What is it? What's wrong?" said Fang, a trace of panic already seeping into his voice.

"My… head… help me…" she whimpered. She screamed again, and clutched at her hair. "It hurts…"

"Fang, we need to land," I said, the same edge of fear taking my own voice. "This is bad. We can't carry her to New York."

He glared at me, probably hating himself for agreeing with me. "Fine."

We landed on the roof of a Wal-Mart as gently as we could, with the rest of the group touching down after a few seconds. Max leaned up against one of the metal boxes- probably an air conditioner or something- and whimpered. "Fang… my head, it… feels like it's being… split open. H-help me…" Fang carefully took her hand in his and squeezed it reassuringly. "You'll be fine," he whispered.

A thought flickered through my head. I leaned forward and started probing Max's head for bumps. Fang glared at me. "What the hell are you doing?!"

"Checking to see if they implanted anything on her during her little stay in California." After a few seconds, I found something- a little bump the size of a jelly bean, right behind her left ear. "Fang, do you know what this is?"

"What? No. Let me see," he said. He ran his finger over the bump. "It's vibrating like crazy. It can't be natural."

"Cut it out…" whimpered Max. "Please…" I looked up to see that every member of the group had anguish written all over their faces. Angel and Nudge were crying silently, Angel hiding her face in her hands. Gazzy was working hard to stop himself from crying along with them. And Iggy… he was looking directly at me, as if to say _You fix this. It'll determine whether we respect or loathe you. That little show with the Armstrong's mixture? That doesn't matter. This is our leader, our team mom, our go-to girl. And right now she's in pain. It doesn't matter that you didn't do this. If you can solve this, we'll trust you. If you don't…_

Of course, I could have been reading way too much into his blank stare. But something told me I wasn't. I think it was Angel.

I took out my skulls-and-snakes pocketknife and thrust it into Fang's hand. "Here."

He pushed it right back into mine. "I can't do it. You do it." He glared at me desperately and a single tear rolled down his face. Beneath us, Max continued to shudder and whimper. I looked at the small node before me. _Okay. This can't be hard. It's easier than killing and skinning a rabbit, and you did that a dozen times on Yock Island…_ I refused to stop, instead tucking the thought away for later analysis. _You can do this._

"Wait," said Iggy. "I have sensitive fingers. I can tell you where to cut." With only a little difficulty he ambled over and felt for the bump.

"This it?"

"Yes."

"Crap, it's practically twitching." He positioned his thumb and index finger around the bump. "Okay, start cutting."

I hesitated. "Wait. Max, can you hear me?"

She nodded.

"I'm gonna cut this thing out of you, okay? It'll hurt like a bitch, but just stay as calm and quiet as you can so that people don't hear. If you need to, you can squeeze my hand-" Fang slid his hand into Max's right hand. "-and Fang's, as hard as you want to, and bite down on this piece of meat to keep from screaming." I handed her a cut of smoked steak from my backpack that was more than an inch thick. As I passed it into her left hand, I was dimly aware that I was coated in sweat.

"Max," said Gazzy. "There are about four black cars pulling into the parking lot. I see Erasers inside."

Great. More pressure. Max took the rubbery steak into her chattering teeth and gave me a thumbs-up before roughly grabbing my left hand. "Ready," she half-mumbled, half- grunted. Beads of sweat rolled down her face.

I clicked the pocketknife open. The blade briefly reflected the sunset before I touched it to her skin. "One… two… three."

The knife sank an inch into her flesh and the pressure on my left hand increased to the point where I could feel my bones grinding together. Max grunted, her breath coming out in short hisses.

I was really, really scared.

"Okay, Ed. That's good," said Iggy. "Move it downward… stop. Any further and you'll hit something important. Bring the knife out about a half an inch and continue downward until you're past the… that's it, now to the right…" He shifted his thumb to get it out of the way, putting it on the area I had cut. Oddly enough, only a few drops of blood were escaping the incision. Fang was gazing at Iggy and me with an expression of awe. Max was violently convulsing, but she remained silent. She was stronger than I thought.

"Bring it up in a curve- too sharp! Okay, that's too wide- perfect. Now bring it upward halfway… put the knife in another half-inch… go the rest of the way upward. Bring the knife back out a bit… another curved cut… stop. You don't want to complete the cut or the flap of skin will fall off. Take the knife out. Good job." I let out a breath I didn't know I had been holding. I wiped the surprisingly clean blade on my shirt- lucky it was already red- and folded it back into the body of the switchblade.

"I'll take it from here," said Iggy.

What?

Oh. The thing still had to be actually taken out. I scooted to the left and allowed Iggy to get closer and reach in with both hands. Or both sets of fingertips, rather; the wound wasn't _that_ deep. I clasped my metal hand on top of Max's left. "We're almost there. Iggy's gonna take it out of you now, okay?" I said. She glanced at me and gave a tiny nod before glaring and setting her jaw. "Go for it," she spat around the steak.

Iggy closed his fingers around the… thing and ever so gently pulled at it. Max's entire body jumped. He continued to pull it out, teasing it left and right. I saw that attached to the bottom of the capsule-like device were several bare wires going deep into Max's flesh. Iggy pulled a little harder on the device, and I let go of Max with my right hand and pinched one of the wires. I gave it a quick jerk, and the wire came out; at the end it coiled and spiraled. It looked like it was supposed to give off some kind of signal.

I felt the pressure on my left hand briefly increase before Max moaned in relief. "Ohh… that's so much better." Fang sighed and relaxed, and took the steak from Max and put it in her backpack. Iggy continued to tease the thing out of her head, and I pulled the wires out one by one- there were five in all, each one ending in the same coil. Iggy made as if to throw the device to the ground and crush it to bits with his foot, but I stopped him. "Don't. It might come in handy later." I pocketed the thing and clapped my hands together before placing them near the U-shaped cut on Max's head.

Fang sat up. "What the hell are you-"

A jagged bolt of lightning struck the cut and Max's skin melded back together before the light fizzled out. There was a nasty-looking scab and she would probably end up with a scar once it healed, but the wound was sealed. I had no idea what I had been doing, but whatever force of memory was behind my actions knew what to do.

"-doing? Oh. You closed it up." Max sat up, slowly faced me and gave a warm smile… "Thank you so much!" …and then hugged Iggy tight while still giving me a smug grin. She leaned over to Fang and hugged him too. "You guys are the best… you took out that thing and now my head doesn't hurt… oh, I'm so glad I have you…" Max let go of him and got to her feet as Iggy, Fang, and I did too.

"Funny how you thanked everyone except the guy who actually sliced the thing out of you," I said, feeling irked.

Iggy smiled a sagely, knowing smile and turned to Max. "Oh, really?" Her face turned pink. "Come on, Max. Thank the guy who did what Fang refused to do."

Looking like she would rather stick her hand in a jar of barbed wire and battery acid, Max turned to me and took a step forward. "Fine... thank y-"

"Well, what do we have here?"

She froze and got a deer-in-the-headlights look on her face. "_Erasers!_" she hissed. Instantly she turned around and balled her hands into fists.

Standing on the roof about thirty feet away from us were a half-dozen tall, stocky men holding rifles, each one standing to the side of the other. Behind them, another man had reached the top of the ladder up to the roof and was getting to his feet. He had a gun, too. Gazzy, Angel, and Nudge slowly stepped away from the men, raising their hands up in the air as they did so. They all had expressions of panic on their faces.

Max summed up the situation as concisely and poetically as she could.

"Shit."

* * *

A/N: I'd like to thank Gemma Rose, Guest, and Doctor Frostybuscus for reviewing the last chapter. You guys are great. From now on, I'm going to start thanking everyone who reviews, because your feedback inspires me to write better chapters of my story.

If I get enough reviews for this chapter of the Flight of Icarus, I might post another long chapter (similar in length to this one). Go ahead. Review. Nothing but good will come out of doing it.


	8. VII: Muscle Memory

VII: Muscle Memory

For the second time in less than five minutes, I was really, really scared.

I racked my brains, trying to think of a way out of the situation that didn't involve my bullet-riddled body falling twenty feet onto pavement. Beside me, I could see Max bite her lip nervously and get into a fighting stance.

"What do you meatheads want?" I said warily, though I already knew the answer. One of the Cerberes stepped forward with a sneer.

"We're here to take you back to the lab," he wheezed. "And if you resist, we'll pump your guts full of lead and the geneta-" He stumbled over the word. "Genete- genet-… the DNA guys will just make another batch of you."

Behind the hulking mutant, I could see that the seventh, smaller man was staring at me. Once he saw that he had my attention, he slowly pointed to his gun, mimed pulling the trigger, and imperceptibly shook his head from side to side. Then he removed his sunglasses, revealing his eyes, and suddenly I understood everything. Just to be sure, he grinned and gave a very slight wink.

That crafty son of a bitch.

I felt confidence wash over me, and I started walking forward. "So why bother even chasing us down?" I asked, smirking. The Cerberes raised their guns warily. "You and the geneticists- that's how it's pronounced, dipshit- could just be spending time making more of us instead of driving out to whatever state this is and-"

I closed the ten-foot gap between me and the closest Cerberus in a single stride, whipped out my wings, flapped them twice for height, and delivered a spinning kick to his head with my metal foot. He fell silently.

Behind me, Max gasped.

I could hear a chorus of clicks come from either side of me as the Cerberes tried to fire their empty rifles. Three of them turned to the smaller guy. "What the hell? I thought you loaded these things!" I took advantage of their distraction to dislocate one's shoulder and twist it violently. Over the wolfman's roars of pain, I could hear the smaller guy reply, "I thought you did! You assholes must've left the ammo in the car!" I sank my metal fist into his hairy head and his screams were instantly extinguished.

A roar of rage behind me meant that another Cerberus was trying to charge me. I flapped once and jumped up in a backflip that soared ten feet into the air. I socked the guy on the way down and his limp frame bounced off the roof; he was out cold.

Another one tried to run at me too; again, I leaped up with a wingbeat, but this time, I chopped his neck twice with my left hand- once from the front, once from the back- and as he bent over, I placed my hand on the back of his head and shoved him down to the floor. A meaty crunch told me that his nose had been shattered. Just to be sure, I stomped hard on his head, and he didn't get up.

Instinctively, I dodged to the left, and a whistling sound in my ear told me why; one of the remaining two Cerberes was using his empty rifle as a club. I backfisted him without even looking behind me. Several broken teeth flew into the air as he toppled forward.

The last one tried to run at me too- these guys clearly didn't learn. I stood on my hands, trapped his head between my ankles, and used his momentum to throw him, upside-down, into a large metal box thing twenty feet away. He made a huge dent in it, and steam erupted from the bottom directly into his face. After three seconds of screaming, he collapsed and remained still.

I had no idea how to fight, but whoever I once was clearly did.

* * *

I held my stance for another second before turning around and facing Max, with a shit-eating (and very teasing) grin plastered across my face. Her mouth hung open stupidly and she was still in a battle stance. One shaky finger extended from her front fist at me. Her face had something on it close to awe, and maybe worship; the same expression was present on Gazzy's face. Fang looked at me with what could only be described as jealousy. Nudge had a hand over her mouth in a perfect _oh, my_ pose, and Iggy looked very confused. Angel, on the other hand, looked much less shocked than the others. She probably knew before I did, the clever little telepath.

"You're a badass," Max whispered. "I wanna learn some of that from you."

"But what on earth can I teach the great Max?" I said teasingly. "She's so much _better_ than me."

She blushed, her face turning as red as my shirt. I grinned even more just to screw with her, and she tore her gaze away from me.

"They're all out cold," said the guy I hadn't clocked. I turned around to see him poking one of the downed Cerberes.

"W-wait, Ed! Why didn't you knock him out too?" stammered Max. She tried to get in a battle stance and look tough, but my oh my, she was still blushing.

"Because this guy's on our side, and he came a long way to talk with us. It'd be kind of rude for me to give him a face full of fist. By the way, his name is Theo."

It was true; he would always talk with me more than any of the Demons, not to mention being kinder and more interesting to talk to. He was a lot more polite than them and regarded the experiments (myself included) as just as human as himself. He also tended to piss off the Demons by interfering with their crueler tests (usually through convenient computer glitches and power outages), but they would just do them anyway during one of the shifts he didn't work. Cages also had a funny way of accidentally unlocking while he was around. I think the only reason why Theo hadn't been fired was because he was the only IT guy/handyman they had, and he'd built their computer network and operating systems from scratch. Maybe because he was the youngest guy there, he was the most human of them. Or maybe it was because working with computers and code didn't eat away at his soul like creating grotesque experiments would.

"I came out here to tell you guys that there was a tracking device implanted on Max, but I had to take a few of these guys with me to make it seem like I was hunting you," he said, tossing his gun to the side.

"Bullshit," spouted Max rudely. "Angel, make sure this guy's telling the-"

"He is," said Angel. "Ed and I met him before you and Nudge and Fang got captured. I was about to ask Ed where he'd been, cause he hadn't seen us for so long, but then you and him got in a fight and then Iggy and Gazzy blew up the wall."

Max's mouth hung open, and I was certain that she wanted to yell at _somebody_, but nobody deserved it.

Theo scratched the back of his head. "Yeah… I 'accidentally' let a virus loose in their computer network after I found out they kept a rabbit hybrid on a treadmill until it had a heart attack. They made me repair every one of the eight dozen computers in the building individually, and then when I was done, they revoked my security clearance so I didn't have lab access. I hacked in and changed it back, and I was just about to pay you guys a visit when your friends blew up part of the room you were in, you guys left, and the cage doors mysteriously disappeared."

"Wasn't the explosion _awesome_?" shouted Gazzy.

Theo laughed. "Yeah, it put me to work laying down two-by-fours, electrical wiring, and Sheetrock for the next day. They still expect me to finish it when I come back. But it was a hell of a bang." Iggy and Gazzy exchanged a high-five without even looking. "Anyway, I brought a little gadget that can remove the tracking… device…"

He trailed off as I took out the wiry capsule and held it up victoriously. "You're a badass."

I could tell that Max was blushing behind me without even looking.

"I can take that thing off your hands, if you want," he offered. "Give me a few hours to screw with it and I can have the guys trying to look for you in Russia."

This time, I could practically hear the grin spread across Max's face. "_Yes, __**please!**_"

I tossed him the capsule. He twisted one side of it and popped the thing in half. He flicked some kind of small switch with his fingernail, closed it up, and chucked it back at me. I caught it without so much as a glance.

"…That's it?" said Max childishly.

"Well, I just remembered this nifty switch I installed that makes the signal become routed through my MacBook before it gets sent to the computers back in California, so I can mess with it as much as I want without having the actual thingamajig in front of me."

"And that little switch just _happened _to be there. Very convenient," spat Max.

"It is, considering I designed it and regularly tamper with data just for shits and giggles," said Theo with a shit-eating smile that looked very familiar. Oh, right, it was Max's.

Max blinked rapidly and took a deep breath. When she looked at us again, she had the same smile on her face. "Won't your companions get a little suspicious when they wake up and you haven't been knocked out or hurt or anything?"

Theo blinked. "Y-yes. Um, Ed? At least don't break my nose. But a black eye or a bruise would make me look tough." He tilted his head to the side to present a bigger target.

I wound up, doubtfully, and was about to throw a metal haymaker when he said, "Wait!"

"Don't tell me you're chickening out," sneered Max.

"No! I just forgot to say something. The device you have is powered by body heat. If it gets cold, it stops giving off a signal, and the others back at the lab will know something's up. So keep it taped to a body crevice, like an armpit, or better yet, just put it back where it came from. The switch also disables the primary program, so Max, you won't get any of those headaches if it gets put back in." Max looked at Angel to make sure he was telling the truth; after a few seconds, Angel nodded. I would have to ask him what the primary program was someday.

Theo smiled. "Okay, Ed, give me a good warrior's wound."

CLANG!

I nailed him in the eye, giving him a magnificent bruise that turned purple and swelled immediately. He swore and stumbled back. "O-okay, how does it look?"

"Like you deserved it," muttered Fang. I gave Fang the finger and Theo a thumbs-up. "Looks great. You might want to act passed-out because I think these guys might wake up soon," I said.

He smiled, but I could tell he was in pain. "Good… and if you guys are looking to learn about yourselves, find a computer and put this in." He tossed me a flash drive. "I shoved every legitimate file on you guys onto this thing. Should make for some interesting reading." He slumped against some kind of ventilation device and pretended to be unconscious.

"We better go," said Max, trying unsuccessfully to act like she knew what was going on.

When we lifted off and continued east, I saw, for the very first time, a genuine happy smile on her face, directed at me. I felt my face burn slightly.

Uh-oh.

* * *

A/N: I'd like to thank Gemma Rose and Doctor Frostybuscus for reviewing again, and give a shout-out to new reviewers winger and Kitty Katakana. It's people like you who inspire me to write more than usual.

Please review! This chapter is where things start to deviate from The Angel Experiment, so I'd love to hear your feedback and know if I'm headed in the right direction.


	9. VIII: Study Break

VIII: Study Break

The sun was dipping closer to the horizon with every minute, but Max decided that it was still worth a shot to find a library we could use to look over the flash drive. We were headed north instead of east to throw off any more surprises Hell might send after us; that was also Max's idea. She was probably trying to assert her authority or some kind of bossy bullshit. I didn't care. Actually, I was trying not to care.

That stupid smile of Max's had lodged itself in my mind and was staying there no matter what I tried.

It just seemed… wrong. She was supposed to be the mean, bossy girl who once slammed my head into metal bars because I wouldn't give her French toast. That sappy grin had _no_ business being on her face at all. It was driving me insane trying to figure it out. Was she happy about the flash drive and possibly locating her parents? Did she finally have respect for me after seeing me kick ass? Or did she-

**No. **No. That was impossible. Totally impossible. There was no way _that_ could be true of her. She was obviously in a good mood because of the flash drive _and_ the fact that I wasn't useless. Yeah, that was it.

But some part of my brain couldn't help saying _You're just distracting yourself from the simple truth that_-

_**NUCLEUS, RIBOSOME, MITOCHONDRION, CENTRIOLE… **_I mentally shouted at the top of my lungs the first thing that came to mind that had nothing to do with Max. …_**LYSOSOME, VACUOLE, CYTOPLASM…**_ I stopped. My mind was quiet. I exhaled out of relief.

_Don't worry Ed! Your secret's safe with me! _Angel's cheery voice sounded in my head. I forgot to flap and briefly fell before I started beating my wings again. I glared at Angel. _What do you mean, my secret?_I thought.

_It's okay. I won't tell Max. I won't tell you about Max's secrets either. But she doesn't even know she has them. Max never likes thinking about feelings. Or talking about them. I think that's why Fang loves her so much._

I glanced at him. At the moment, he was saying something to Max that made her laugh and lightheartedly smack him with her wing. He smiled.

_You're kidding. He actually has a crush on her? I was only joking back in Hell when I told Max he liked her._

She mentally giggled. _Oh, he does! Ever since Jeb took us out of the School, he's been thinking about her nonstop. But she only sees him as her best friend and kind of her brother. Fang's been waiting for years for her to like him too._

I suddenly felt very guilty.

_What about Iggy? Does he like her? _I asked. I didn't know why.

_A little. She liked him for a little bit just before the Erasers took me from home. I think the only crush Max had was on Thor about a year ago. She only liked you a little at first because you kinda reminded her of him, but now she-_ Angel paused. _I said too much. Please, please don't tell Max I said that… _

I bowed my head in shame. _I promise._

Max looked up at me and smiled. "Hey, Ed! I think I see a library!" She dove, folding her wings in and spiraling downwards. It was amazing to watch.

Uh-oh. _**CELL WALL, CILIA, FLAGELLA, NUCLEOLUS…**_

* * *

The library had a group study room that was perfect for us to use. Max was reading through the flash drive's contents on the computer she was using, with the rest of the group reading over her shoulder. I was using another computer, directly across from the one Max was using, to read about Itex's offices and labs in New York (and science articles on Wikipedia when I got bored). Max had told me that she'd get my attention if she found anything interesting.

"He definitely put _every_ file on us in this thing," muttered Max. "I wish he could have organized them a little at least."

"Like how?" said Iggy.

"There's like a billion files on this thing and they're not named according to their contents or put in folders or anything." She clicked the mouse twice and frowned. "See, like this one is named 63gh00xkcd, but it's results from a test of Ed's, um, muscular strength… how the hell are those numbers that high?!" She whipped her head up and glared at me. "You weren't genetically engineered there like me and the flock! How is it that you're stronger than us?"

"Oh, they let me use their gym when they weren't testing me or reverse-engineering my limbs," I said, not even looking up from the page on nuclear fusion I was on.

Her mouth hung open slightly for an instant before she looked back at her screen. "Oh. Um. Okay. Uh, this next one is called 671fk00xkcd, and it looks like some kind of unfinished blueprint for your metal leg. Nothing helpful there."

"Wait," said Fang. "Are there other files that end in 00xkcd?"

"Um… yes, tons of them."

"See if they're about Ed too. If they are, then the files are named after us, but in code. Like, 00xkcd would mean a file's about Ed."

She clicked the mouse a few times.

"They are! You're amazing."

He allowed himself to smile. "I know." Now Max had that stupid smile on her face again. I directed my attention back to a graphic description of heat and pressure at the core of the Sun.

Max and Fang quickly figured out the chunks of text that corresponded to the rest of the group. Meanwhile, I switched back to reading about Itex. "Hey, Angel," I said. "When you overheard the Demons thinking about the R&D firm in New York, did they say New York City or New York State?"

"They just said New York. I thought they meant New York City, so that's what I told everyone," she said, confused. "Why?"

"The only Itex branch in the city is a tax-preparation and financial planning office. I think the R&D place might be upstate."

Angel walked over and unsuccessfully tried to look over my shoulder before she settled for standing beside me. "Is that a map of Itex places in New York?" she said anxiously.

"Looks like it. There're mostly factories out west, except for a dairy in the middle of nowhere and a water-treatment facility on a canal near… Rochester. I don't… ah, there they are. There are thirteen R&D firms in the eastern part of New York."

Nudge and Gazzy joined Angel beside me.

"This first one is the Carroll Automotive Research Institute, located near Pow- poughkey-" I swore under my breath at the trainwreck of a name. "…_that_ city right there. Doesn't look like they have anything to do with Hell- oh wow, it says that they're close to a breakthrough on a practical steam-powered car! And it also says here that they're working on a three _thousand_ horsepower motorcycle engine! That's so cool! And then this says that they sold a vegetable oil-powered design to Honda for $3 million and…" I continued like this for a few minutes before I noticed Max roll her eyes.

"Go to the next place and stop boring everyone," she said. "Science geek."

_Automail geek._

The phrase flashed through my head almost reflexively. I tucked it away for later analysis and went to the next one, feeling embarrassed.

"Uh, the next one is in… Modena. It's an agriculture center with an emphasis on pest-resistant crop development-"

"Ed! Ed! That's it! That's the one! That's the one in the middle right there!" squealed Angel, literally jumping up and down with excitement.

"The… Hitchens Organic R&D Center?"

"Yep!"

Max looked up from her computer. "Are you serious?" Angel nodded.

"The site describes the place as 'a friendly science-oriented workplace, voted "Best Employer In New York" four years in a row, a leader in organic printing technology'- whatever that is- 'and home of the most productive genetic research lab in the Western Hemisphere'. I think that's our place," I said.

"Well, good to see _your_ work led us somewhere. This… crap is nothing but a bunch of technical data and test results. It might as well be written in Swahili," Max muttered, her hopeful expression turning into a pout I couldn't help but find cute. Angel giggled. _Don't you _dare_ tell her that_, I thought.

A female voice blared from a speaker in the ceiling. "The time is now 8:20… the library will be closing in ten minutes. Computers will automatically shut down in five minutes. Thank you!"

"It _is_ getting late," Max added. "We should probably leave so we can find a forest or something to sleep in."

"But Max…" whined Nudge. "It's been _weeks_ since we've slept in beds! Can't we find a hotel or a motel or something? Pleeeease?" She added Bambi eyes to her plea, which made absolutely no difference.

"Nope. We can't take a chance on the School tracking us. Plus we don't have any money."

"Um, we do," said Iggy, pulling a wad of cash out of his pocket. "Remember Mr. Jerk at the ATM and green-haired Ari scaring the crap out of him? Gazzy and I spent some of it on food and bomb-making stuff, but there's still some left, I think."

Max's mouth hung open silently before she took the cash and counted it. "Thirty… forty, fifty, seventy, seventy… seventy-nine dollars. Not enough. We can't all share one hotel room."

My eyes wandered from Max's stubborn pout to the Wikipedia tab on nuclear fusion, to a plastic bin filled with waste paper, and finally to a torn flyer on top advertising a sale at Rico's Jewelry. And suddenly I had an idea.

I checked the ceiling for cameras- there were none- and then walked over to the bin. I placed my hands together and felt an oddly familiar sensation inside my head, like a key turning in a lock and making tumblers fall into place. "Okay, I'm about to do something slightly illegal, so you just go ahead and look the other way for a second." The words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them, but I concentrated on what I was about to do anyway before placing my hands on top of the pile.

The familiar lightning traced a path from my hands to the paper, and the pile seemed to collapse in on itself. The paper condensed into a watermelon-sized ball and slowly shrunk as objects dropped out of the bottom. I pushed the power more and more until the ball was all gone.

Lying at the bottom of the bin was a pile of gold rings, bracelets, and necklaces. I reached in and grabbed a handful and held it out to Max. "We can find a pawn shop or jewelry store and get some money for these so we can stay someplace decent." I smiled Max's trademark shit-eating grin, making her blush angrily.

"…Fine. Let's get out of here at least," she stammered, and ripped the flash drive from the computer. I closed the browser window with a smile on my face and scooped up the rest of the gold.

* * *

Three hours later, we were staying at a Marriott, with me, Max, and Fang in one room, and the rest of the group sharing an adjoining room. I was on the couch, writing the day's flashbacks in my Memory Journal and trying to stay awake to complete the task. Max was on one bed, doing inventory and packing the bags as efficiently as she could. Fang was on the other, moodily staring into space (and at Max when he thought neither of us was looking). The door to the kids' room was open, and I could hear a television.

It had been a long emotion-filled day, and the rest of the group probably thought so too. I couldn't hear any voices coming from the kids' room, except for the ones coming from the TV, which meant that the kids were probably asleep. Fang's eyes were closing, and every so often Max's head would drop before she would wake herself up and try to continue. I finished the last sentence in my journal as she stuffed the last blanket into a backpack. She turned to Fang and me with a weary smile.

"I'm gonna go to bed now," she announced. "I hope we can get those files in New York tomorrow."

Fang said something in a low voice that put a smile on her face. "I hope so too," she said. "Good night, Fang."

She turned to me. "Um… good night, Ed."

I forced a smile through my drowsiness. "Good night, Max. See you tomorrow morning."

She stammered for a second before her face turned red. Suddenly she got up and made for the door. "I'm… uh, I'm gonna go flying for a bit, be right back." She ran out the door and slammed it behind her.

_Girls… I'll never understand them,_ I thought before I closed my eyes and fell asleep.


	10. IX: New Leaf

IX: New Leaf

I ran out of the room as fast as I could, barely noticing Ed and Fang stare at me, and jumped out the window at the end of the hall. My wings snapped open reflexively and I beat them as hard as I could. I needed to make as much noise as possible to drown out my thoughts.

The mental argument started after I took note of the landmarks around the hotel.

_Why are you being so difficult?_ whined the friendly me.

_What's there to be difficult about? I can't trust Ed, no matter what my gut tells me,_ said the regular, suspicious me. _He's an unfamiliar person who somehow got himself attached to the flock. And besides, that power of his scares me. He even said- well, kind of- back at the library, that he's breaking the laws of physics. If the School can engineer that into their spies, it's even more of a reason to be afraid of him._

_You don't know he's a spy!_ bitched Friendly Max. _Ed's a nice boy, and he's been nothing but nice to you since he met you. You've been nothing but mean to him. Isn't it time you made friends with him?_

_**No.**__ The second I let my guard down he will kill me- and the flock. Or worse, contact the School and get us back there. When I get back to the room I'm gonna throw him out the damn window. That should teach him to spy on us,_ said Regular Max.

I flapped my wings harder and hyperventilated. It was getting noisy in my head.

_How can you say that? He fought off a ton of Erasers-_

_Which means that he's capable of killing me and the Flock. No matter what the odds are. Even in a six-on-one fight he could finish us off. It won't be The Acrobat Ed vs. Street Fighting Flock, it'll be The Acrobat Ed vs. Six Sacks of Potatoes. I'm going to do us all a favor and get rid of him. Somehow._

…_I like how Ed fought. He was really graceful and skilled and even though he could have, he didn't kill the Erasers. Doesn't that last part sound familiar? You've never killed anything either._

_Listen to yourself. You've already let him sucker you into trusting him._

This had to stop.

_What's so bad about making friends? You've never had a single one. And the flock doesn't count. They're family._

_This mission isn't about making friends. It's about finding our parents. And if there's time, destroying the School._

"NINETY-NINE BOTTLES OF BEER ON THE WALL, NINETY-NINE BOTTLES OF BEEEER…" I screamed at the top of my lungs, flying directly into a noisy wind.

_But don't you think Ed could help you do that? He can protect you from Erasers, he saved you from making a pointless stop in New York City… and not even you can say Ed's power wouldn't be useful in demolishing the School._

…_I guess it could help._

_Then why be so mean to him? You know he wants to be friends with you. And I want to be friends with him too. So why don't you make friends with him?_

_He'll wait for me to let my guard down and then kill me! I can't afford to relax around him!_

"TAKE ONE DOWN AND PASS IT AROUUUUND, NINETY-EIGHT BOTTLES OF BEER ON THE WALL!"

_Oh, come _on_. Even you have to admit that's paranoid. _

_Ugh, fine. But he better be worth it._

I waited a couple of seconds for the Maxes to get out of my head.

_Hey, did you see the way he smiled at you when-_

_**Go away.**_

* * *

I made it back to the hotel a few minutes later. I marched up the stairs all full of confidence and ready-to-try-something-differentness. I unlocked the door and entered as quietly as I could.

Both Fang and Ed were fast asleep. Fang was mumbling in his sleep, his arms outstretched towards the door. And Ed… well, Ed was snoring up a storm, sleeping with his stomach out, and huddled in a corner of the couch.

_He's cold. Do something about it._

I went to my bed and took the quilt off the top. I dragged it to Ed and draped it over him. He twitched, but pulled the blanket around himself and smiled.

_He kinda looks nice when he smiles like that, doesn't he? Totally worth it._

_Who let you back into my head?_

I sighed.

I walked over to my bed and flopped onto it. I clutched the sheet around me, and the last thing I saw before I fell asleep was Fang, stretching his arms out towards me in his sleep.

* * *

I was the first one up the next morning. After I got out of the bed and went to the bathroom, I went to the curtains and opened them. It was rainy. Crap.

"Looks nice out."

I jumped about a foot in the air and whirled around to see Fang right behind me, perfectly awake and with that dang smirk on his face. "When will you stop doing that," I hissed, after making sure my pants were dry.

"When it stops being funny," he said, one corner of his mouth curling into a half-smile.

Ed shifted on the sofa and sighed happily before mumbling something that sounded like "lie cue win ree". Then he opened his eyes. "Oh… mornin', Max. What time…?"

"Uh, it's a little after 8:30."

"…Okay. Um, I might stay here and take a shower or something. Do you want to take everyone to the donut place 'cross the street for breakfast?"

"I guess."

Ed reached into his pocket and peeled $60 off of the wad of cash we had left over.

"I'll see you guys over there in a bit," he said, and went back to sleep.

* * *

A/N: I'd like to thank Doctor Frostybuscus, Mcat9905, Eron Elric aka the malchemist, and SentouLewis for reviewing.


	11. X: A Rainy Day

X: A Rainy Day

When I woke up an hour later, I found myself on the floor wrapped in a blanket that I didn't remember going to sleep with. I got to my feet after tripping on the damn thing and sat on the couch. Then I noticed Max's bed was missing its blanket.

Wait a minute.

That meant that someone had taken the blanket from her bed and put it over me. It couldn't have been Fang. But it couldn't have been Max. Neither one of them seemed like the kind of person who would drape a blanket over me. How did it get there? _Who_ put it there?

I turned on the TV to distract myself from the questions rattling around in my head. It didn't take long for me to get distracted. The first thing that came on was a news story about the branch of Hell in New York.

"…Hitchens Organic Research and Development Center, located in upstate New York, is making headlines _yet again_," said the female anchor with genuine enthusiasm. "The highly praised laboratory has received a $500,000 federal research grant for use in developing 'software updates', the informal term its scientists coined for a specialized virus they believe could be used to genetically engineer fully-grown organisms! Jack Jennings is reporting live from the complex with one of the facility's top scientists. Jack, can you tell us more about this and why it's such a breakthrough?"

The camera switched to two people, an older man in a white button-down shirt, and a smiling younger guy wearing cargo shorts and a t-shirt emblazoned with "Geneticists do it in their genes." _Looks like CNN correspondents don't have a dress code,_ I thought. Then I noticed that the older guy was the one holding the microphone.

_Wait, how is the kid a top scientist? If anything, it should be the wrinkled old man. People who look like they're still in high school have no business being associated with Hell._

_Good morning, Ed!_ Angel's cheerful voice sounded in my head. _We're seeing this too over here! Max wanted me to wake you up and tell you to turn on the TV so you could watch it, 'cause it's about the place in New York._

"…I understand that these so-called 'software updates' are actually nothing more than engineered viruses," said Jennings, "but aren't viruses dangerous? How have you managed to turn them into something that can be used to help people?"

"You've _got_ to be shitting me," I blurted out, facepalming. Anybody who knew anything about biology could see everything wrong with that statement. Fortunately, the kid on TV was more patient.

"They can be dangerous," he said, "but that only depends on what kind of nucleic acid- we call it 'code'- they carry. If you create a virus with beneficial code and inject somebody with it, you can do anything from curing HIV to boosting-"

Jennings dropped his microphone, flustered; the Demon smiled apologetically at the camera before picking up the mike and handing it back. "I-I'm sorry, did you say this technology can _cure HIV?!_" he spluttered.

"In theory, yes. It's proving to be a little more difficult than we thought; to make it viable for human usage, we need to understand human genetics _completely_. Once we know the human genome back-to-front, we can work on the cool stuff like curing innate genetic diseases and weaknesses, and, yes, HIV."

Jennings's eyes widened to the size of golf balls. "A-a-and how long, would you say, how many years before you can do that?"

The kid smiled. "Give us five or six months and we'll finish it completely."

_Angel, did you catch that? That's so cool! We _have_ to go there as soon as possible! _

_I know! I know! Everyone's looking at the TV here! Except Iggy. He thinks it's just Gazzy pulling a prank. _

_How's Max?_

_She's fine… oh, she just told me she wants to know if you want her to bring anything over for breakfast._

…_really? Um, okay, sure. Tell her to get me some black coffee and something with steak and eggs. And tell her I said thanks. _

_She smiled and told me to say, "You're welcome"._

…_What's up with her? She's been so mean to me. So why is she being so nice to me all of a sudden? Can you peek at her thoughts and see?_

_I can't. She doesn't like it when I peek at her thoughts. And besides, she's thinking pretty loudly about that boy on CNN and how cute she thinks he is._

_**WHAT?!**_

_I, um, sorry, I was reading Nudge's thoughts instead. So, so, you wanted black coffee, bacon, and eggs?_

_Steak, not bacon. Thanks. I guess I'll see you guys in a bit._

I switched off the TV and sat on the couch for a while, thinking about New York and listening to the rain thrash against the balcony door.

* * *

I was in the shower for a good half hour or so, letting the hot water and suds wash away all the damns I gave over the last few days. I made sure to give my wings a deep cleaning, along with the rest of me, since I didn't know when my next shower would be. I shut off the water, stepped out of the tub, and toweled off.

I think it was when I tied the towel around my waist, bundled up my clothes, and started flapping my wings to dry them that I heard the noise, but I assumed it was someone out in the hall. I continued my wingbeats, shaking my hair to dry it too…

…and then Max stepped in the bathroom, her hair and clothes sopping wet from the rain, wearing a tank top and jeans, and started to take off the tank top, all while looking backwards and saying, "I might take a shower for a little bit, I'll meet you guys down in the rec room, ok- hurkkk!" She turned her head and saw me, and she choked up, her hands freezing just as she was pulling the damn thing up past her waist.

We stood there for a few seconds, me trying desperately to fix my gaze on Max's _face_ and not… not the rest of her, while Max stammered and flushed until her face was the color of the hoodie currently wadded up in my hands.

"I, uh, uh… h-hi, Ed," she choked out. "Did-didn't think y-you were, um… drying your… uh…" She mumbled incoherently and stared at me.

"Wings?" I offered, successfully nailing my gaze to Max's face and not any other part of her. "My hair?"

"Yeah… that."

"Do you want me to leave?" I asked, making sure the bundle of clothes was in front of my waist.

"N-no, I'll just… um… use the shower in the other room. Sorry to, uh, bother you," she stammered, and ran out of the bathroom. I heard the door to the other room slam shut and a few seconds later, the water in the other bathroom was turned on.

_What on earth could she have been staring at?_ I wondered, wiping the condensation off of the mirror so I could see myself. I was treated to the sight of myself, drenched in water and suds, my hair a dripping mess, and a few feathers stuck to my body… and as soon as I noticed it, I started blushing too. _Shit. She's probably running the water to cover up the sound of her laughing. Why didn't I just lock the damn door?!_

* * *

Later on, when Max and I were both showered and dressed (and she had a shirt and jacket on over her tank top), we ran into each other on the way downstairs to the rec room. She started to get flustered again, but I just told her, "Max, I don't blame you for staring earlier. I was a freaking mess. You were probably laughing about it, but I won't get mad about it."

She stared blankly at me for a few seconds, her mouth partially open, before she closed it, forced a laugh, and said, "Oh. Yeah, I guess you looked funny. Um, are you going to the rec room?"

I sipped my coffee. "Yep."

We walked down the stairs. I ate my steak-and-egg sandwiches and drank my coffee, while Max talked about the plans for the day. "…it's too rainy to fly, obviously, so we'll be staying here today. We've got the rec room and TV to keep us busy- there's a gym too, if you want to use that- and we'll order Chinese and pizza for lunch and dinner, you know, either pizza for lunch and Chinese for dinner, or Chinese for lunch and pizza for dinner. We might need you to make a gold run to the jeweler's, though, just so we have enough cash left over for food on our way to New York. How's that sound?"

I crumpled up the sandwich wrappers and tossed them into a garbage bin. "Sounds good, I guess."

"Great!" She turned to me and smiled. "So are you feeling up to a game of pool?"

* * *

_Clack! Clacka clack…_

"Looks like you're solids and I'm stripes, Ed."

I downed the last of my coffee and chucked the cup across the room into a bin. "Right."

The six of us were the only ones in the rec room; Gazzy was off in the arcade with about $10 of our money in quarters. Max and I were playing pool, and the rest of the group was playing table tennis, with Fang and Angel on one team and Iggy and Nudge on the other. Iggy was surprisingly good at the game, only missing the ball a couple of times.

Max and I played our game in silence and awkward glances- how do you make small talk with someone you barely know? I was about to say something when she looked at me and said, "So, um, Ed, do you want to tell us about yourself? I haven't thought to ask you before, but now that we have time, we should get to know you better."

I was suddenly aware that everyone was looking at me.

"…Okay."

I lined up a shot and took it, sinking the 7 in a middle pocket.

"I think you guys already know that I have amnesia. Well, it's true. I can't remember anything from more than two years ago. I don't know what caused it, but Jeb told me it was because they tested a nootropic drug on me that went wrong- but given that dream I had and what you told me, Max, I'm starting to disbelieve it."

Max paused in the middle of drawing the cue back, raising an eyebrow and looking up at me.

"My earliest memory is of signing some kind of testing contract. In exchange for my full cooperation and allowing them to look at my arm and ankle, they'd give me special treatment and set aside some kind of trust fund with my earnings that'll mature when I turn 18-"

"Which is?" asked Max, thrusting the cue forward and smacking the 11 into a cluster near one of the pockets.

"…well, I don't exactly know. But Jeb had the Demons run some tests, and they guessed that I'm about 16, taking into account height, hormone levels, body structure, and a few other things. They couldn't figure out my birthday, so they just told me to pick whatever day of the year I wanted. I chose-"

Nudge perked up. "That's what we do! Max said-"

"Nudge, shush! Ed was talking!" Max turned to me. "Sorry about that. You were saying?"

"Never mind, it doesn't really relate to what I was trying to say. I got off track," I said, taking a gamble and using the 8 to knock the 2 into a corner pocket.

"As I was saying, for the past two years I've been helping them out with endurance tests, testing new medications, testing artificial organs, and letting them look at my limbs… I guess you could say I'm proud of it. They kept me up-to-date on how the results of my tests were being used, and let me give suggestions…"

Something clicked in my thoughts.

"…now that I think about it, everything they've done, everything they've said has seemed a little inconsistent to me. But that's for another time."

Max walked around the table to my side and looked up at me. "I think I know what you mean." She turned to the table and made a shot. "So that's it? Nothing in the last two years but testing and testing?"

I smiled. "Well, towards the end I met you guys, which was a nice break."

Nudge giggled.

"When I wasn't testing, they'd let me use their gym and look through old lab reports. I guess that's it, except for the dreams I have every so often, which I think might be memories coming back."

Iggy looked in my direction. "What's the story behind your arm and leg?"

"I don't know, and neither does Jeb or anyone else at the facility in California. Every few months they'd replace a few parts to make them the same length as my nonmetal limbs. For a little bit, they were talking to me about replacing the things, bit by bit, with something lighter and stronger- but then I kind of escaped with you guys. They did tell me that it's advanced- really advanced- and since they were telling me about reverse-engineering it, that means that it isn't Itex technology."

Angel raised her hand. "Um, what was it you were saying back at the School about eating more than you, than you poo?"

"I… I'm not sure. They put it to the test once, when they made me eat two pounds of food and weighed both my waste and me, and somehow, a few ounces of food just disappeared. That was also one of the things they were going to look into right before I left."

I added some chalk to the tip of my cue and unsuccessfully tried to bounce the 6 into the pocket nearest me.

"What's up with that power of yours?" said Fang.

"No idea," I said bluntly. "I only found out about it right before we left. But from what slipped out of me, it has something to do with the Earth's tectonic energy, and it can't create or destroy matter. Just change it."

"I think that's enough about me," I said, and watched Max take a shot at the 9. "What about you guys? What have your lives been like?"

"…You have no idea," said Fang.

* * *

Fang, Angel, Nudge, and Iggy told me their story, and Max and I finished our game- she won, but only through a trick shot that I was sure was illegal. We sat down on a couch near the others' ping-pong table and watched them play.

"Hey, Max, can we get pizza?" asked Angel. "I'm getting hungry."

"Of course," said Max. "Can you ask Gazzy what he wants? And make sure to tell him that he isn't getting anything with banana peppers. Not after what happened last time."

"…what happened last time?"

Everyone who was not me smiled.

"It was a few years ago," said Iggy, snickering. "Jeb had ordered us pizza and wings after we spent the day with him planting rosebushes outside the house. Gazzy wanted to try something new, so he got Jeb to order a large pizza with banana peppers for him."

"Yeah, I got that," I said, rolling my eyes. "But what happened?"

Max looked at me and giggled. "It took about four hours for the stuff to make its way to Gazzy's colon. And when it did… hoo boy! I mean, lots of stuff gives Gazzy gas, but the banana peppers made the stuff downright awful! We had to sleep outside that night and opened all the windows to ventilate the house! We had to wait… oh, about four days for both the house to be tolerable and for the pizza to get out of Gazzy."

"And thus we vowed: never again shall we make the mistake of letting Gazzy near spicy food," said Iggy, holding his arm out in a dramatic pose.

Max found this hilarious, and we shared a laugh for a few moments, but it was cut short.

"Oh, Maaax, I like you soooo much," said someone who sounded just like me.

"**WHAT?!**" said Max, Fang, I at the same time, Max blushing heavily.

"That's it, you son of a bitch," snarled Fang, and stomped over to me, his fist pulled back.

And then Gazzy ran into the room, snickering, and slapped a high-five with Iggy.

"…oh. Don't do that," muttered Fang, trying to regain his stoic façade.

Everyone was looking at me, Max, and Fang, until Fang broke the awkwardness by saying, "So… pizza?"

* * *

Within three seconds of it arriving, we'd coated every table- including the ping-pong and pool tables- with boxes of delicious, delicious pizza, packed with hot grease and toppings; one table was dedicated to holding the boxes of wings and bottles of soda.

"Hey, Max, is it considered cannibalism for us to eat chicken wings?" asked Nudge, attacking a slice of veggie-laden pizza. "Iggy says it is."

Max sighed. "Iggy, for the last time, stop grossing out Nudge. It's only cannibalism if what we're eating is the exact same species as us. Birds eat other birds all the time, but it's only cannibalism if they eat a bird of the same species. It's like saying… eating a hamburger, for example, is cannibalism, just because cows are mammals like us. Kinda."

I paused mid-chew. "What _do_ you guys consider yourselves?"

Max shrugged. "Avian-Americans?"

I smiled.

"What do you consider yourself, Ed?" asked Nudge.

"Normal amnesiac human with metal limbs, matter-stretching powers, and a pair of wings welded onto his back."

Max blinked. "It looks like that's not all. Your eyes… they're gold-colored."

Nudge looked up from her pizza, looked at me, and squealed. "Oh they _are_! They're so pretty and beautiful!"

I scowled. "I don't _want_ my eyes to be pretty! I want them to be sharp and steely like a spear! Pretty eyes are for girls."

"How sexist," spat Max around a mouthful of pepperoni and extra cheese.

"It's not sexist! I'm saying I don't want my eyes to be girly!"

"You're saying that girls can only have pretty eyes. That's sexist."

"I-I did _not_ say that!"

"Did too!"

"Screw you!"

"Fuck you!"

"Eat shit!"

"Eat shit and die!"

I was dimly aware of Angel and Gazzy paying close attention to every profanity Max and I exchanged, probably saving them for future use.

"Shove it up your ass!"

"Blow me!"

"Blow yourself!"

"Suck yourself!"

I opened my mouth to tell Max to engage in sexual congress with a certain piny fruit, but stopped when I noticed Iggy, Nudge, and Gazzy leaving with some of the food. "Where are you guys going?"

"We're gonna go up to the room to eat before you two start kissing," said Iggy.

Max choked violently on a mouthful of pizza; I coughed and sprayed my soda all over the room. Just before they left, I saw Iggy turn to Nudge and say "She's cute when she can't spit it out, isn't she?"

* * *

We ate some more of the pizza in silence. Max did everything possible not to look at me for the rest of the meal.

Fang, meanwhile, was attempting to rip me apart with a Look that was failing miserably. I think it was because of the smears of tomato sauce on his face that looked like a handlebar moustache and goatee. I kept my mouth shut for a few minutes, but I had to say something.

"Hey, Max," I said. "Check out Fang's facial hair."

"What are you… oh, oh my gosh Fang! There's tomato s-" She fell off the couch, laughing.

Fang flushed and scowled. "I'm going upstairs."

"I'm coming with you!" squealed Angel. "_SpongeBob_ comes on TV soon!"

Max and I were left alone in the room with a couple of half-empty pizza boxes. After three seconds of awkwardness, she ran for the door, yelling "Last one out of the room has to bring the food up!"

I sighed and stacked up the boxes before making my way upstairs. "Asshole."

* * *

I got to the room and opened the door with only a little difficulty, but the room was empty. As I put the food down on a table, I noticed that the pillows had been taken from the beds. _What is this?_

"You're gonna pay for that!" _Whump!_

Laughing and giggling issued from the adjoining room. I smiled and opened the connecting door…

…and saw Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel engrossed in a pillow fight, shouting and laughing, while a cartoon blared from the TV. That, combined with the rain pounding against the building, presented me with a cacophony of energy and noise.

Nudge paused in mid-swing. "Max! Max! Ed's here! Can he play?"

Max smiled. "Come on, Ed! Grab a pillow and join us!"

"I… I don't think…" I stammered, only for Fang to clock me in the head with a pillow (and probably some pent-up anger too).

"Oh, that was SO uncalled for!" I shouted, smiling, grabbed a pillow, and nailed Fang right back. I waded into the fight and started swinging, laughing like a little kid.

Iggy and Nudge sat out after a few minutes and watched (well, Iggy listened to) the cartoon; meanwhile, Angel leaped on top of the other bed and jumped into Max, squealing "Flying hug attack!" I snatched up Angel's pillow with my other hand and smacked Gazzy with them.

After a few minutes, the fight had ended and everyone was laying down on the beds or the floor, catching their breath and watching the TV, where an animated squid was trying to form a marching band.

"I'm hungry," whined Angel. "Max, can we get dinner?"

"But we just ate, sweetie," said Max. "And besides, it's only 3:00 or so. It's still lunchtime."

"I wouldn't mind some food either," said Iggy.

"Me too," said Gazzy. Fang got up and went into the other room and came back with the pizzas and soda.

"I want some of Nudge's pizza," said Angel.

Fang opened the boxes and started passing out the remaining slices.

"What kind of slice do you want, Iggy?" asked Max, picking up a meat-laden piece.

"Not that one," said Iggy. "That has too much pepperoni on it. The one next to it is okay."

Everyone froze and looked at Iggy.

"Which one do you want, Ig? The one to the left or to the right?" said Max evenly.

"The one to my left and your right… wait a minute…" Iggy paused. "How did I know that?"

Nudge squealed and hugged Iggy. "You can see again! That's so cool!"

Iggy blushed. "No, I can't see… it's like I can sense where things are. Like, I can tell there's more stuff on the slice to Max's right than the one in her hand."

He covered his eyes with his hand.

"It's not my eyes... but how can I see?"

Nobody spoke for a few seconds. Then Nudge frowned. "What's that noise? It's like a buzzing or humming or something. It's... is it coming from Iggy?" She leaned in to Iggy's neck (he blushed even more) and put her ear to his Adam's apple. "There's a noise coming from your throat!"

"I don't hear anything," I said.

"Me neither," said Iggy.

"I can hear it," said Max. "It's almost impossible to hear... it's really high. Like a ringing sound."

"It's echolocation," said Fang. "You can see the echoes bouncing off of objects."

"Not quite sight," I said.

"But you can still see!" squealed Nudge. "That's so awesome! I'm so happy for you!" She hugged Iggy tighter, completely ignoring how his face now resembled a tomato.

* * *

We ended the day in Max's room, eating Chinese food and sitting around the TV, watching five people sit around a TV and eat Chinese food while taking shots at each other (one of them, a skinny guy with a big nose and a bowl cut, seemed to be getting the most abuse) and talking about science and someplace called the Cheesecake Factory.

_Ed?_ asked Angel.

_Yeah?_

_Do you think we'll find what we're looking for in New York?_

_I don't know. Maybe. But today's gotten me rested enough to face anything. What does Max think?_

_She wishes we could stay longer, but she's excited to see what we'll find there. And she's happy that she got a day to relax and not worry for once._

_...I think I am, too._

* * *

Author's Note: Whoo! This marks the tenth chapter of the story! (Technically, the prologue counts too, but seeing as how that was mostly lifted from _Fullmetal Alchemist_, I don't really count that.) After two years, seven months, three weeks, one day, 14,927 words, and 37 reviews, my writing has come a long way, and I have you, my readers and reviewers, to thank for that. So, I'll thank as many of you as I can. (I might list you more than once.)

Thank you to Mcat9905, Darkness Incarnated, Doctor Frostybuscus, Aeonaxx, SteelLark, and DreamweaverAki **for reviewing Chapter 10/IX**. I really appreciate it, and your comments are always welcome.

**As for my favorites list, I'd like to give shout-outs to** Aeonaxx, Captain RAGE, ChaosShay, CrimsonLaurana, CrimsonPrincess123, DreamweaverAki, Eron Elric aka the malchemist, Gentsmaster 3000, J-chan and Co, John Imagine, Lost in Reality's Mirror, Moemoepl, NekoTaku24433, Pounce the Cat, RinzlerIsTron123, Seiga Niko, Shortalch, Spartan058Linda, SteelLark, T'086421, WeWereCaughtInTheMoment, WingedBirdy, WingedHero540, cooking samurai, darkwolf1662, fly to the heavens, gydragonwing, rainstripe, servant of matryoshka, theRogueHatter, and verylexiful. **You guys mean the world to me, and I very much appreciate your readership.**

**My followers also deserve recognition, so I'd like to thank** Aeonaxx, Alchemist Astrid, Anily AKW-DPP, Avampiress, Burning Tortoise, CrimsonPrincess123, Darkness Incarnated, DreamweaverAki, Gemma-Rose-628, Golden Burnt Summers, Hoshi-tachi, J-chan and Co, JessTalksAlot, John Imagine, Kaite1211, Khait Khepri, Lazy Historian, Lk6lu, Lost in Reality's Mirror, MadHatter4866, MaiaLynn, Mcat9905, MorbidCheese, NekoTaku24433, Queen NekoChan, RagingCacti, Ridinggrl27, Samswimmer, Seiga Niko, Shortalch, Skai Breeze, SoftcoreOtaku, SteelLark, The Lazy Alchemist, WeWereCaughtInTheMoment, WingedBirdy, Zadie Rose, archsage328, book234, cold lightning, georgster101, i say hello, jetstorm317, kiwihead136, rainstripe, 99, syllymillie, thebasementdweller, and verylexiful. **You are the best, and I speak for every writer on FFnet when I say how great it feels to have people follow my story.**

Once again, please review and tell me what you think. Your comments are incredibly helpful, and reading them is the highlight of every day.

-GDos


	12. XI: Remorseful Recall

_(Props and congratulatory cookies go to DreamweaverAki for correctly guessing what I was planning on doing in this chapter. It may be eight months since the last chapter, but I haven't forgotten! Kudos to you. As thanks, I will do my best to write a bit more unpredictably from now on. :3)_

* * *

XI: Remorseful Recall

* * *

"_Hey, big brother, what are we gonna say to Mom when she's back?" says Al, looking up at me._

"_Don't tell our teacher!" we say at the same time, and laugh._

_We start dumping things into the large trough- powders and a few liters of water. The finished product looks nothing like Mom. It's a nasty-looking solution, not the warm, loving person that Al and I miss so much._

_But we're about to change that._

_We finish by placing a handful of her chestnut-colored hair in the circle that Al had taken from her hairbrush (this is what'll turn the raw materials into our mother) and then we prick our fingers, allowing the blood to drip into the materials (part of our souls). The pain barely registers, being covered up by the anticipation of finally seeing Mom. We've tried so hard to get by without her. I mean, Granny Pinako has done her best to raise us, and Winry's been like a sister to me, but… well, they're not Mom. Nothing can replace her warm smile and the way she cared for us so much, how she'd hug me close, even when she got me to drink my milk at every meal…_

_I'm grinning just thinking about it. But I quickly remind myself that soon enough, I won't need memories, 'cause I'll have my mother again. For real._

"_Ready!" says Al, standing at the circle. I run over next to him, and in unison, we put our hands together and slam them onto the sigil we've painted on the floor._

_It glows in response, and lightning scissors through the air, arcing up from the outside of the circle and shooting down into the gunk Al and I mixed. We exchange a smile- it's working! It's really working!_

_The lime and phosphorous are the first to mix, forming Mom's bones. We can see them being molded already- a rib here, a femur there. Just below the surface of the goo, I can see a lower jaw being created, the teeth pushing themselves out one by one. A wind sweeps the room, making my hair flutter back and forth and causing the raw materials to ripple back and forth._

_But amidst all this, I feel a horrible, sinking feeling in my gut. Something's wrong. Why? Al and I got the formula right, didn't we?_

_Al and I exchange another smile, but I can tell he's feeling the same thing I am; his smile is forced, less awestruck and more nervous. And suddenly, I feel it. An animalistic, instinctive urge to run._

_The alchemic lightning brewing in the circle lashes out and hits Al. His limbs start ebbing away. It's deconstruction._

"_Ed!" he screams. "Big brother! Something's wrong!"_

"Ed!"

"_Al! No!" I scream, as the lightning carves away at his body. "No!"_

"_Ed help me please help me-"_

"_I won't let-"_

"Ed!" The room shook.

"_-big brother-"_

"Ed!"

I woke up. I was sitting up on the couch in the hotel room. Max was shaking me awake, a concerned expression on her face. The blanket was tangled around me, and I realized I was coated in sweat. My right hand was gripping the side of the couch, and Max was holding my left hand in hers.

I was breathing like I'd just run a marathon.

"M-Max?" I stammered. "What-"

"It's okay," she soothed. "You were having a nightmare, that's all."

The clock over her shoulder read 2:55.

"I… I didn't wake you up, did I?" I said, taking a deep breath and exhaling. What happened in that dream? Who was Al? Why was I trying to bring back my mom?

And more importantly, why was Max straddling me?

As if she was reading my mind, she looked down and blushed.

"N-no, you didn't wake me up," she said, moving herself so she was sitting on the edge of the couch. "I had to get up to use the bathroom, a-and you looked like you were having a nightmare. I mean, you were thrashing around on the couch. And you were saying 'Al' and 'No' over and over again."

She took the box of tissues off of the table behind me and gently wiped the sweat off of my face, then took my Memory Journal and a pen off of the same table. She gave me a small smile.

"Look… Ed, I'm sorry you went through all that," she said quietly. "But while it's still fresh in your mind, want to tell me about it?" She flipped open to the most recent page and clicked the pen.

"Right… it was inside a house. I think it was an attic. I was little- maybe eight or nine years old- and there was another boy with me. His name was Al. And we were… I think we were trying to build a person out of chemicals. We were talking about our mom, and we used a lock of a woman's hair. And then…"

I vaguely noted that Max was gazing at me with sadness.

"We clapped our hands and put them on this sigil that was drawn on the floor. And that lightning appeared, coming out of it, and it hit all those chemicals, and I could see bones being formed but there was something wrong and Al was being hit by the lightning and he was screaming 'big brother' over and over and I couldn't help him-"

She cut off my babbling by scooting over and embracing me tightly.

"Shh. It's okay. It was just a dream."

She was hugging me…

I was struck by how… _warm_ Max was. Her soft arms were around my back and over my shoulder, her right hand placed on the back of my head and pulling me closer. Some whiny part of my brain was saying _She's treating you like a toddler! Just because you had a nightmare doesn't give her the right to think you're some kind of kid! _

But I didn't care. This felt… right, somehow. She inhaled and quietly sighed. I gingerly hugged her back as my nose registered that her hair smelled like honey. The terror of my nightmare had become a distant memory. She squeezed tighter, and whispered reassuringly, "It's okay, Ed."

She pulled away and held me at arm's length. She had a small smile on her face.

"Do you… do you feel any better?" she asked. Her face was pink.

I smiled. "I, um… yeah, I guess. Thanks, Max."

A pause.

"I feel like you've done this before," I said.

Max returned the smile. "Well, yeah. When Gazzy and Angel got nightmares, I'd always make sure to help them feel better."

She ruffled my hair condescendingly.

"And now you," she said teasingly.

"You are so rude," I said. She smirked, ruffled my hair one last time, and went back to bed.

I laid back and slowly drifted off, but before I fell asleep, my head tilted off to the right. I saw Fang, apparently asleep, clutching the sheets in a death grip. My eyes trailed up his arm.

His eyes were open. His teeth were clenched.

He'd heard everything.

* * *

**Author's Note:** I am so sorry for forgetting about this. From now on, I'll do my best to keep updating. But, since it's been so long since the last update, some thanks are in order:

First, I'd like to thank those who have favorited The Flight of Icarus since the last update: **UltraJohn567, Mists of Ribbon, DragonicSonic, Stormywolf12, Chaosjuice98, and AquilineFeline.** I'm happy that you believe my story is good and worthy of favoriting.

Next, props go to the story's new followers: **PSML, Mists of Ribbon, DragonicSonic, Chaoshift, Stormywolf12, Sora Kim, and AquilineFeline.** It's great that you guys decided to keep in touch with The Flight of Icarus, and have been patiently awaiting the next update.

Finally, my reviewers! **Gemma-Rose-628, DreamweaverAki, Alchemist Astrid, Mcat9905, Doctor Frostybuscus, PSML, and Doctor Frostybuscus again!** I really appreciate your thoughts and feedback!

As always, thanks for reading.

-GDos


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